He got up from his chair and paced a few steps. “We didn’t discuss exactly what we’d do as a follow-up,” he mumbled to himself. “But, at least, I won’t have to do anything until he gets back home and messages me.”
Not five seconds later, the phone rang. It was Pat Montmoracy, the ex-General’s wife. “Frank wants you to edit that list you two made, tighten it up, make it nice and concise. He says you’re the better writer. Then, he says, try to contact ‘Blog Talk Radio with Ed Tidrick’ and request a joint interview for both of you, by phone or skype, for next week or as soon as he can schedule you in. See if you can sell him on the concept. “
“OK, tell him I’ll see what I can do, Pat.” What else was he going to say?
Then, he turned his attention back to the Goldsby question and managed to get a member of the legal team on the phone, Frederic Geselle, who had solicited his help in the first place.”
“Mr. Geselle, how are you?”
“I’m ok personally. But this campaign against Goldsby, well, it’s gotten to be kind of worrisome… I know, what else is new?”
“Then, I take it you don’t believe that the… what is it? fifty-some allegations by now from those women, are factually accurate? “No, Sir, I don’t! Do you? But there’s the prospect of money attached to it, and, though they are going to have their day in court, perhaps, they might all be hoping to get in on some sort of group settlement, don’t you think? ... I know, they said they didn’t want anything, but… I mean, when you think about it, it is possible, don’t you think? Well, right, the damage is already done! Now comes… And, to tell you the truth… Yeah, alright… I’ll see what I can do. Yes, what’s his name? I’ll get in touch with him today.
“…Eric Ratzel? Right. Yes, I know him… Man-about-town, fancy dresser, entrepreneur, retired so-called ‘FIB’? Are you sure?… Did you say SOB?... No, absolutely not… Seamlessly. At a design studio? What’s the number? Yes, I’ll do what I can (which won’t be much). Let me see what I can find out… Yes, today. I’ll get on it… You, too. Thank you, Fred, Frank.” (Talking to himself): “I can’t believe that! Eric Ratzel was FIB! Hmmm… Ya know, I really think old Will might have to find his own way out of this one.”
* * *
“Retired Colonel What? Who did you say you are?”
“I was calling for Ratzel. Eric Ratzel. Yes.”
“…Oh, Fred! Sure! Well, I’m not current with what you call the ‘FIB’, really, but I do still know some of the people. How is Fred Gaselle mixed up in this?” “He’s being retained as a legal consultant by Will Goldsby, as I understand. I’m just doing him a favor, at his request… (How did I get involved in this?) No, not sure why he asked me.”
“I see. Well, Hoover’s boys vetted and trained most of their successors. Some of whom may still be there, for all I know. Their influence sure is, I’m told… Say, I have a pretty definite idea who, or whose, or which division at the Agency the inquiry, or inquest, you’re looking for might fall under, and who might, or probably would be involved, if there actually was such a thing – as what I think you’re alluding to." Not that I have any real clear idea what you’re saying.”
(Pause) “You see, I think you could be onto something.” (Pause) “Now, you’ll need to understand, I’m not permitted to give names. It’s in my severance contract. But I can, I think, give you a clue – it doesn’t say anything about that. The clue is: ‘spreads fear’. But, now, that’s as far as I’ll go.”
“’Spreads fear’? But, that could be any of them, couldn’t it? They all do that, don’t they?”
“Sorry! that’s as far as I can go.”
* * *
“Hello. I want to speak to Mr. Tidrick’s private secretary, or scheduler … He’s there now? … Good! Put me through, then, please! … Mr. Tidrick! Colonel Alva Crystal, ex-Colonel, USAF. … I want to talk about getting an interview on your program, about debunking eight deadly American myths, centered around military matters. … Yes, myself, and ex-General Montmoracy, also served in the Middle East wars. You know Frank? Good! Then, could it be scheduled for some time in the next couple of weeks? OK. Hour-long interview. At 3 Eastern on the third. OK! I’ll pass the word along…”
“General Montmoracy, eh? … this could be really interesting!”
Ex-Colonel Alva started talking under his breath again, thinking about the other case. “’Spreads fear’, did he say?... Well they all spread fear…” Then he started jotting notes again, and taking note of the welt on his neck, suddenly beginning to sting like crazy. “Nuff said.”
And he hung up.
XXV
Felicia
The next day, Colonel Crystal’s wife, Felicia, called from Charlotte to say that her mother’s health had improved “wonderfully," and so she (Felicia) would be arriving at Tallahassee International aboard Delta flight 526, on Thursday at 3:22 P.M. The anticipation, coupled with the anxiety ignited by that news, sent the Colonel falling headlong into a merciless cycle of flashbacks.
He suddenly remembered the time when they were courting, and he came down from upstate New York on leave, not long before resigning his commission and returning permanently from Iraq. She had been afflicted lately with slight memory-loss involving where she’d parked her one-of-a-kind “mauve” Peugeot, “Lizzy," and he had resorted to the remedy of installing a long whip antenna with a red ball at the top – easily visible above throngs of cars from almost half a mile away.
And he remembered how, after attending the North Carolina State Fair outside of Raleigh, and walking back to the expansive parking area, they had seen what appeared to be that red ball swaying majestically high above a hundred thousand vehicles of every color and kind. Staggering toward it, as anyone would following a hot, long day at the fair, they noted that the red ball, a sort of minor planet in a vast, empty overhead blue firmament, had begun to move!
Concluding that the Peugeot, a singular car to be sure, was being stolen, they pursued, following the slow progress of the tiny ball coursing over the hundreds of vehicles leaving the grounds at more-or-less the same time. They chased after, stumbling on, dusty and fatigued, alongside an endless file heading toward the exit gates. Another quarter-mile, and they had gained but little on their quarry, but refused to give up.
Finally nearing the evident location of the moving ball, they concluded that something seemed a bit off about it. Finally catching it at a stoplight, surrounded by a heavy flow of slow-moving traffic, they beheld that the vehicle they had been chasing was in fact a Volkswagen convertible sporting the tiniest Confederate flag on the end of a long whip pole, with six near-identical bulky shirtless youths in straw hats crammed inside, their flowing reddish hair waving in the hot wind.
As they turned around to head back, Felicia, near collapse, was crying hard and laughing uproariously at the same time, making her paramour wonder, while the Colonel himself, his spotless uniform soaked with sweat, was quietly close to a non-distinguished-officer-like collapse.
And he never failed to recall in one of these flashback bouts about his beloved if quirky wife, with a deep sense of pity mixed with sadness, the time when, not long after their marriage, Felicia asked if he would get her a diamond ring for Christmas, because no one had ever gifted her a diamond. He found a nice and affordable diamond on E-bay, which turned out more than satisfactory, mounted on an attractive right-sized gold ring, very much pleasing her.
A couple of weeks later, he received in the mail from the E-bay seller a certificate of appraisal for the diamond and an emerald ring appraised at the same time. Thinking his wife would find the documentation impressive and interesting, he showed it to her. And, to his everlasting regret and horror ever since, she accused him of buying the appraised emerald to give to another woman, a thousand repeated denials availing him nothing.
Then, in the midst of the anguish inevitably brought on by this most-dreaded of the invariably-the-same series of vivid flashbacks, he recalled how his sister Margaret, Colby’s mother, h
ad unmercifully hounded his first, much younger wife, Edie, in her own way just about as unstable as Felicia, insisting that no one in the family would accept her, due to her thick German-born accent – ultimately driving her away, inconsolable, forever.
When he returned to sober awareness after this much-repeated mordant reverie, the still lovestruck ex-Colonel immediately got up from his hammock and walked straight down to Eva’s Flowers to pick out a fittingly impressive Welcome Home bouquet for his wife. Never let it be said that he didn’t try!
XXVI
Felicia’s Return
On the day of Felicia’s return, Colonel Crystal enlisted Colby to drive him to Tallahassee in his Dodge Caravan, and Colby agreed to let his uncle’s neighbor, Peleg Johnson, whom he’d spoken to before across the fence, ride along to pick up a new generator on order for his airplane, his own Mitsubishi pick-up being in the shop. Colonel Alva, for the forty-seventh or forty-eighth time in less than three years, acquiesced to Peleg’s coming along, but only under the condition that Colby would agree never, under any circumstances, to accept a ride in their handyman neighbor’s homemade plane.
That understood, they took off in the Dodge, with Peleg and Colonel Alva’s super-extravagant bouquet consisting of twenty-nine roses consigned to the back.
Just out of the driveway, Colby disclosed that he had been in touch again with Margaret, his estranged mother up north, and that she had been working on him to come back, to help her move plantings on her acreage.
“So, are you going to go?” Colonel Alva Crystal asked.
“No,” Colby answered firmly, and no more was said of it – or of anything – for the next thirty-five miles.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” Peleg Johnson, in the back seat, finally broke the silence. “Did somebody die?”
Silence, then, “Not exactly,” Colonel Crystal answered.
“It’s family,” Colby chipped in, staring straight ahead, both hands on the wheel.
“OK! OK! I get it!”
Finally, Colonel Alva broke the silence definitively, addressing Peleg: “Remember that time, right after we’d first come down and moved into what you called the ‘Carper place’ next to yours? And I left to go to Tampa to pick up some furniture and Felicia felt put off, because her old wooden-box TV hadn’t been set up proper-like yet, flush with my satellite dish?”
“Oh, yeah! But I try not to think of it too often,” Peleg Johnson, the quintessential patch-it and fix-it man, announced, his face flushed a bit redder than usual.
“And then, remember, I come back next day,” the ex-Colonel resumed, “in the evening, and the whole town seemed to have gone dark. There wasn’t a speck of light anywhere. I don’t think you’ve heard this before, have you, Colby? And the sheriff of Taylor County, he was parked out front of our house.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” Peleg Johnson said.
“And there were reports of outages all the way up the coast to Maryland, I heard, and even, someone said, the President was complaining that the lights at the White House flickered for at least an hour! Not sure I believe that one. How the hell were you able to do that, Mr. Johnson?”
“Well… well, I’m sure I never heared of all that before,” Peleg remonstrated, modestly. “And how they could have traced that whole problem to right here, I guess I never understood, either. It must take some rare talent to pull such a thing off, though, so I guess maybe you’re right.”
An hour later, approaching Tallahassee International from the south on U.S. 19, Colonel Crystal began to comb into submission his sparse remaining hair and fidget a little, and asked Mr. Johnson to hand him, over the top of the seat, the monstrously out-sized bouquet. It appeared a bit flattened on one side, and Peleg tacitly admitted due to mounting guilt that he must have sat on it for forty miles after he got in the car.
Colonel Alva sighed but said nothing as he turned around to take hold of it and began to straighten the number of broken and crushed stems and fluff the sad-looking roses, restoring the bouquet to a state reminding him of its onetime glory.
And then they were at the gate, and after parking in a plebian outdoor lot, they trudged the quarter of a mile in, under the endless concrete garage and walked up the terminal ramp three-abreast. Colonel Crystal, fumbling with the long-stemmed bouquet, carrying it this way and that, trying to make its flattened and only slightly-damaged side disappear.
They finally arrived in the waiting zone up still more flights of steps just as Felicia’s flight from Charlotte was disembarking, precisely on the dot. Colonel Alva picked her out as she approached from the tall, red, rather distinguished-looking hat she always wore that reminded him of feathered helmets donned by conquistadores in certain Floridian historic paintings.
As she stepped out from the long line, the Colonel rushed to her side, if walking stiffly while brandishing half a crushed rosebush prepared for thrusting forward can be so characterized – and threw his long, thinly hirsute free arm around her ample back, folding her irresistibly in, while transferring custody of the tangle of long stems and sagging blooms.
She gazed at him, struggling tearfully to set down her over-stuffed carry-on bag onto its pegs, and embraced and locked lips with him until he nearly careened backward right there on the crazy-patterned linoleum.
Then, in that syrupy voice that had captured him from the very start, still sight-unseen over the telephone, she cooed in her own patentable sort of husky whisper, “How’re y’all doin’, you rascal?”
She had a way of making even epithets and threats sound civil and lady-like, he often thought. “What y’all been doin’ with yerself?” she now repeated, beseechingly, gazing up at him from a well-measured one-and-a-half arms’ length.
“I been bein’ good mostly,” he murmured. “Tendin’ the garden and conductin’ a little light research, ya know, like I do.”
“Oh? Whatever on earth about?”
“Well, for one thing, military efficiency, and one or two of my pet projects you said you wouldn’t really care to know anything more about, ‘member?”
“I did? I said that? Well, whatever could I a’ been thinking?”
There was no indication yet that she had even yet noticed that Colby or their neighbor were along. Then she took note of the outsized still flaming rouge-colored mark on the right side of her man’s neck and pouted her mouth a little bit.
Then, “So, Colby, were you able to safe-keep this… man out of deliberate mischief and harm’s way?”
“Well it’s not exactly mischief that it was,” Colby spoke up. “But your good friend, as I understand, Pat – remember? ‘Pat M.’, as I’ve heard you call her, came to visit you, and you weren’t at home.”
Hearing this, Felicia dropped the flowers onto the patch of the now endless green carpet past the linoleum they were now slowly starting to navigate.
“That bee-itch,” she intoned, in her perfect honey-sweet alternative soprano through her suddenly clenched, flawless pearly-whites. “To let that cad and traitor overwhelm her! My word! Was he here – at the place – too? I almost hope…”
The Colonel eyed Colby with mild disdain. “Yes, dear,” he admitted, a bit sheepishly. “And he and I were as pillars,” he went on, “standing together, applying ourselves to our true duty.” He could not believe he had spoken to her so forthrightly. But, then again, she had to know sometime.
“Which is that treason?” This she screeched. “You were supposed to serve your country, Mr. Colonel Alva A. Crystal, Sir! That’s what I always liked about you, remember? Not sell it down, under the guidance of that sad pair of broken reeds…” She was practically sobbing.
And she began to shake just a little again, leaving the roses where they lay, as they all followed her straight down toward the baggage claim and exit, the Colonel trying to think, for the hundredth time, how to explain as he strove to catch up.
Peleg and Colby followed in the wake of the two, Colonel Crystal sighing and muttering imprecations, which w
ould, unfortunately or fortunately, never be fully heard.
XXVII
And the Beat Goes On
That evening, back home, the unpleasantness of the airport reunion was forgotten. After a three-hour nap to rest from the trip, Felicia seemed jubilant, her mood as light-hearted as Colonel Alva had seen it in two years.
Yet the Colonel started to worry as to how he could proceed with what he considered his work, and she said was just “meddling." They had been at odds over his sudden, drastic change of attitude since their courtship, after his resignation and return from the Middle East. And now, with his new stronger commitment, indeed, how could he proceed?
So, what did she expect him to do with his time, day after day? Eat breakfast, take out the garbage, walk her little dog, fresh back from the kennel, fix the TV, buy gas for the car, and then what? Forget or stifle his own notions and ideas, to try to live up to her vision of a perfect Southern, conservative gentleman and distinguished military veteran? All while mouthing cherished platitudes, based on lies about America’s eternal righteousness and exceptional right and obligation to forcibly put recalcitrant foreigners in their place? Even if that place was under the sod? Is that what she wanted his life to amount to?
Like hell I would! he thought, to himself.
But her sentiments must be honored, too, in some way, at least not be blown up in her face.
So, how was he to press forward, given all that?
* * *
In consequence, he determined to move ahead in another direction. At least, for the present.
And so, he got back to his former ‘FIB’ insider contact, Fred Geselle, by email, and got him to send down, by certified mail, a list of publicly-known agency operatives, broken down by department, to comb using the murky clue he had been tossed as to who might reasonably be suspected of systematically targeting a figure considered problematic, like Will Goldsby.
Tangentially, he rolled over in his mind again his purpose, as he saw it, for his limited involvement in a matter so apparently wrongheaded as protecting a possible scalawag who had done some good. What was the point? Nothing more (nor less) than promoting fairness for all. All. Fairness, he thought, may even be impossible, as some that he called “knee-jerks” loved to point out. But seeking it isn’t.
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